Many businesses use music on-hold-compatible (MOH) telephone systems to provide a customer with music or audio promotions of products or services while the customer is placed on-hold and waiting for assistance. A number of existing MOH telephone systems use tape players as the audio source. The promotional messages are recorded on endless loop cassette tapes. These systems are disadvantageous because the tapes are subject to wear, and the tape players are prone to mechanical malfunctioning. Messages are not modified (i.e., adding or deleting individual messages from a message playlist or modifying the sequence for playing messages on the playlist) because an individual message track cannot be accessed without first winding the tape forward or backward, respectively, past the succeeding or preceding message tracks. Thus, tapes requiring modification are usually discarded, and a new tape is purchased and recorded with messages in accordance with a new message playlist.
Another type of existing MOH telephone system eliminates the use of a tape player by downloading digitized audio messages onto an integrated circuit (IC) chip. The stored messages are played in a particular sequence that is repeated. While the number of moving parts that are subject to mechanical failure is reduced, the system is nonetheless disadvantageous because it is does not allow a user to program when an individual message is to be played or to add or delete a message from a playlist or modify the sequence with which the stored messages are played.
An improved MOH telephone messaging system is disclosed in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/999,592, filed Dec. 31, 1992, for ON-HOLD MESSAGING SYSTEM AND METHOD, the entire subject matter of which is hereby incorporated herein by reference for all purposes. The improved MOH telephone messaging system uses at least one optical disc player, such as a compact disc player (CDP), as the audio source. A CDP delivers improved sound quality and offers the ability to add or delete individual messages from a playlist and to change the play sequence of messages stored on an optical disc. For example, the CDP can be programmed to not play one or more of the stored messages at all. Thus, a message playlist can be altered without purchasing and recording a new message storage medium, unlike audio sources which use a cassette tape or an IC. The disclosed CDP-based telephone messaging system, however, is not remotely programmable.